Oh, that clears it up. That means that no company is ever the first in its industry to cut prices, so no company has ever cut prices. Ever. I don't think so.
For most industries with competition, yes, there will be one that offerings a competing product for less. For things like cell phones, MP3 players, computers, this typically has to be preceeded by a cheaper manufacturing process.
But we're talking about telcos and cable companies here. Prices for cable have been rising faster than inflation for years now. Not getting cheaper.
I'll agree that there's little competition, but it's still there. I have several broadband options in my area (Comast, Verizon, Earthlink, HughesNet...), and I doubt I'm alone.
I didn't say there was little competition. There is none. Your area seems to be an exception, not a rule by any stretch. Even people in NYC typically only have at most two choices.
I live in a city with 600,000+ people. Here are my choices for high speed (note that I AM within city limits).
Adelphia
End of list.
Even if I could get Verizon DSL, its magnitudes slower than Adelphia. So it is cheaper, but also locks me into a yearly contract. Otherwise, its the same price, for less. At any rate, that is moot, because I have only one choice for HSI. Fortunatly, I'll soon have a choice, but not because of private business. The city of Burlington is rolling their own FTTH solution, which will include phone, cable tv, and internet. Once that's in place, Comcast will have some competition. Not much, but some. (By the time its in place, Comcast will have completed the takeover of Adelphia).
I'm sorry, but your argument still falls apart, because for most of America, there literally is no competition. Even if you have two companies, do you really think they want to price war with each other? Probably not, more than likely they'll collude to keep prices high. If Verizon or Adelphia/Comcast find another source of revenue, you can bet that they will keep access prices the same for HSI. There is no incentive for them to start a price war.
Um, shouldn't the police have to prove that you were up to no good? Being an amature chemist shouldn't be enough to cast suspision on you. Just being interested in chemistry shouldn't be a crime. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
Well, not sure if it would count as 'these days', but when I was 10 I had a home chemistry set from Radio shack. It definately got me interested in chemistry, and taught me respect for certain chemicals (it had a bunch of warnings). Also from radio shack was one of those 30 in 1 electronics 'labs.' They both got quite a bit of use from me. The chemistry set I also included as a projec to make a home made volcano. Got an A i think:-)
We all know that when Joe Average buys his new Dell/HP/Whatever sometime in 2007 it will come preinstalled with Vista. Plus MS will cease support for XP forcing upgrades as it gets more bug prone than ever.
You assume everyone is going to be buying a new PC in 2007. Most Joe Average's already have a PC. MS will end support for XP two years after Vista is available. XP has been getting more and more stable since its release. You act as if software rots, and more and more bugs will be introduced into a system where they weren't before.
Not all old games will work on Vista
This is true, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of games that run on XP will run on Vista. Do you also slam MS when they don't break backward compatiabilty because of a security hole?
a few new/popular ones will be patched after launch if there are more sales to be had or if there isn't a sequel planned for release soon.
If a game didn't sell well, why would they support it very long?
Pretty much the same story as on the 360 (not many games been added to their backward compatibility list since it first appeared - most of them new games with support written in from day one).
Um, the 360 hasn't been out that long, has it? And why would a game studio add support for the 360 when they know people still have the original Xbox which they can play the game on. You're blaming MS because companies aren't re-releasing the same old crap on the newer platfrom, which requires them (I'm inferring from your statement) to update the code? What a shock!
Microsoft lost interest in you playing games on your PC when they came up with the XBOX. Apart from a few niche games that wouldn't translate to the format - Flight Sim, Age of Empires, etc.
You start off by telling us MS will only release DX10 on Vista to force gamers to upgrade. Then you tell us that MS doesn't care about gaming on the PC. Which is it? DX isn't going anywhere anytime soon; they are continuting to release a managed DX API so that.Net programmers can use DX. They wouldn't put all that effort in if they didn't care about gaming on the PC. Its odd they they've already commited to Halo 2 (or was it 3?) on the PC (for Vista only), but they don't care about gaming on the PC.
Look, if companies pocketed every cent of profit every year, no company would ever grow because there would be no investment capital. While capital can be given to CEOs, more often than not it's reinvested into the company so that it can expand.
Fine. How does what you say have any bearing on cutting the price of broadband for the customer? It doesn't matter if they pocket it or 're-invest' it, customers WON'T be getting a lower price.
Anywho, I was talking about a company getting more money from one of their sources (more profit), which it can use for reinvesting, giving bonues.. etc., but cutting prices for its customers is a very normal option for such a company.
Sure its an option. Will they ever do it? Nope.
Have you never seen a company cut prices for customers?
Only if a competitor does so first. The price of products do go down as you produce more, but that's not the case in a telco (or cable) which offer services. They're also monopolies.
Wal-Mart gets it's products at a discount. Wal-Mart could decide to just charge the exact same as everyone else, and let the Waltons pocket that billions of dollars in difference every year, but instead, since they have this extra money already available for expansion/normal expenses, they cut prices.
You don't know how Walmart works do you? Walmart insists that suppliers lower prices for Walmart. They even suggest lowering the quality of products which are meant to sell at Walmart. So those Levis you buy at Walmart are actually of lower quality than the exact same pair you could get anywhere else. Walmart WANTS lower prices, because it wants to undercut the competition. Where is the competition for Verizon DSL or (cable co.) High Speed internet? There is none.
Naturally, this brings in more customers and, hopefully, will ultimately bring in more customers. 100 people paying $29/mo. is better than 50 people paying $39/mo.
You've offered no proof that a company which enjoys a monopoly would lower prices though. You're assuming competition where there is none. 100 people paying $29 / month might be good, but why make them pay $29 when you can have them pay $39 because, seriously, where else are they going to go?
Oh, I don't know... Is $600+ for a video game console or $60 per game is stupid?
A computer isn't a game console that just plug in and have work. People are more relucant to upgrade their OS than buying another black box. And yes, $600 for a game console, when you can have a computer that can play games AND do other tasks, is stupid.
Microsoft will be pressuring developers to create Vista-only games to force gamers and consumers to upgrade to Vista. This happened during the transition from Windows 98 to Windows XP.
They can try to pressure all they want, but that doesn't mean it will happen. If the majority of the game studios audience isn't on Vista they, they simply won't target Vista. Its as simple as that.
I don't recall MS pressuring game studios on the move from 98 to XP, especially since for some people, the move was 98 to WinME. Thankfully, ME was short lived.
In the end though, the peasents foot the bill. You don't really think that content providers will just lose the revenue do you? No, they'll pass it onto you,the customer.
Because you'll not only have to pay for a larger pipe at your end, you'll also have to pay several telco's for the 'privledge' of their users seeing your site. THAT would be a huge cost.
That would be pretty stupid, don't you think? MS might want you to upgrade, but they aren't going to render your previous games unplayable once you've done so.
People, if that were true, would not go to Vista, which means game studios wouldn't target DX10 either.
As it is, it will probably be a while before game studios target DX10; they actually do try to target the largest audience.
The parent poster is wrong, but so are you. The FACT is that violent crime in the US has been steadly declining for about 30 years now. Even with an increase in blacks and latinos.
Of course you may be right; except that its whites who are less civilized.
Ah yes, the same old chestnut - it's always the parents fault. Even when the kids are exposed to pressures by the larger changes in sociey.
Ugh.. ok I will respond to one more point in your idiotic post. Studies have shown time and again that parents are the single largest influence in a childs life. Much more so than their friends or society at large. So yes, it is always the parents fault.
You keep acusing everyone of having their head in the sand, when you really don't know your facts at all.
Ok, now explain away the other symptoms of increased violence - like eight year old shooting other eight year olds on a regular basis. Or road rage. Etc... Etc... (Or consider the fact that most of the shootings to date have been by the disaffected - not by the preppie set that experience most of this pressure.)
How do you have 'symptoms of increased violence' when violent crime is actually on the decline?? I'm not going to bother to respond to the rest of your drivel, if you can't even get your facts straight.
And the plain fact is that over the last forty-fifty odd years, such interpersonal and societal violence has increased - sharply.
Er, where are you getting your information from? The FBI has been reporting a steadly decreasing violent crime rate for something like 30 years now.
An assumption unsupported by anything other than anecdotal evidence.
I think most people that play games would agree though. How many people does it take before its no longer anecdotal?
Once doesn't have to be 'PC' to compare the number of school shootings in the 70's to the number in the 90's to see that something has changed radically in society.
Yes, violent crime has decreased since the 70s. Focusing on one area of violent crime doesn't change that. School shootings weren't unheard of in the 70s either.
There are also many fools who won't look at an equal truth - we as a society have gotten more violent in recent decades.
Where's your proof? I'll restate; FBI statistics how violent crime has been decreasing steadly over the past 30 years.
The controls of manners and self restraint that once held such things in check are slipping.
I'll grant you that people are becoming more rude... but being rude and violent are hardly the same.
It's unlikely that video games bear the whole burden - but it's a reasonable that either as a cause or a symptom, they are likely to be involved.
Why are either of those reasonable? Sounds like you just have an axe to grind because you don't like popular video games, music, and movies.
Does the fight club necessarly have to become a terrorist cell? I don't think so. It only did so in the movie because their leader had alot of influence over the participants. In reality, not all of the participants would be that easy to sway to terrorism, and would likely report what was going on now.
If you had read the article, you'll note that the police acknowledge that the fighters are there willingly, and thus didn't really have any legal reason to stop them.
Seems to be it would be irrelevent if you knew karate or not.
They are operating under a logical fallacy. A flurry of calls after an overseas call does not mean the two are related in any way. Perhaps (and more likely than the person being a terrorist) is that the person which received the overseas call and then calls domestically is just relaying family information.
I know my family operated like this (although completely within the US). All you had to do was tell my grandmother something, and you could rest assured she'd spread the news to the rest of the family for you.
heh, if only it was that easy. I tried to download and install IM software to my phone; to finish the installation, the phone had to reset. It did, but it never again go past the first verizon screen. It instead reset itself again and again.
Verizon couldn't fix it (actually they blamed me), so the phone is now trash.
Errr right OK. Maybe you should consider the fact that you don't have to stick a *nix box behind a firewall if you don't want to (although its more sensible to do so) because you can turn services off.
Care to name the windows services which you can't turn off? I wouldn't put any machine outside of a firewall that I didn't have to. I'm also curious if anyone repeated that experient with sticking an XP machine directly on a cable modem to see how long it took to become compromised, but with SP2.
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Oh, that clears it up. That means that no company is ever the first in its industry to cut prices, so no company has ever cut prices. Ever. I don't think so.
For most industries with competition, yes, there will be one that offerings a competing product for less. For things like cell phones, MP3 players, computers, this typically has to be preceeded by a cheaper manufacturing process.
But we're talking about telcos and cable companies here. Prices for cable have been rising faster than inflation for years now. Not getting cheaper.
I'll agree that there's little competition, but it's still there. I have several broadband options in my area (Comast, Verizon, Earthlink, HughesNet...), and I doubt I'm alone.
I didn't say there was little competition. There is none. Your area seems to be an exception, not a rule by any stretch. Even people in NYC typically only have at most two choices.
I live in a city with 600,000+ people. Here are my choices for high speed (note that I AM within city limits).
Adelphia
End of list.
Even if I could get Verizon DSL, its magnitudes slower than Adelphia. So it is cheaper, but also locks me into a yearly contract. Otherwise, its the same price, for less. At any rate, that is moot, because I have only one choice for HSI. Fortunatly, I'll soon have a choice, but not because of private business. The city of Burlington is rolling their own FTTH solution, which will include phone, cable tv, and internet. Once that's in place, Comcast will have some competition. Not much, but some. (By the time its in place, Comcast will have completed the takeover of Adelphia).
I'm sorry, but your argument still falls apart, because for most of America, there literally is no competition. Even if you have two companies, do you really think they want to price war with each other? Probably not, more than likely they'll collude to keep prices high. If Verizon or Adelphia/Comcast find another source of revenue, you can bet that they will keep access prices the same for HSI. There is no incentive for them to start a price war.
Um, shouldn't the police have to prove that you were up to no good? Being an amature chemist shouldn't be enough to cast suspision on you. Just being interested in chemistry shouldn't be a crime. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
Well, not sure if it would count as 'these days', but when I was 10 I had a home chemistry set from Radio shack. It definately got me interested in chemistry, and taught me respect for certain chemicals (it had a bunch of warnings). Also from radio shack was one of those 30 in 1 electronics 'labs.' They both got quite a bit of use from me. The chemistry set I also included as a projec to make a home made volcano. Got an A i think :-)
We all know that when Joe Average buys his new Dell/HP/Whatever sometime in 2007 it will come preinstalled with Vista. Plus MS will cease support for XP forcing upgrades as it gets more bug prone than ever.
.Net programmers can use DX. They wouldn't put all that effort in if they didn't care about gaming on the PC. Its odd they they've already commited to Halo 2 (or was it 3?) on the PC (for Vista only), but they don't care about gaming on the PC.
You assume everyone is going to be buying a new PC in 2007. Most Joe Average's already have a PC. MS will end support for XP two years after Vista is available. XP has been getting more and more stable since its release. You act as if software rots, and more and more bugs will be introduced into a system where they weren't before.
Not all old games will work on Vista
This is true, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of games that run on XP will run on Vista. Do you also slam MS when they don't break backward compatiabilty because of a security hole?
a few new/popular ones will be patched after launch if there are more sales to be had or if there isn't a sequel planned for release soon.
If a game didn't sell well, why would they support it very long?
Pretty much the same story as on the 360 (not many games been added to their backward compatibility list since it first appeared - most of them new games with support written in from day one).
Um, the 360 hasn't been out that long, has it? And why would a game studio add support for the 360 when they know people still have the original Xbox which they can play the game on. You're blaming MS because companies aren't re-releasing the same old crap on the newer platfrom, which requires them (I'm inferring from your statement) to update the code? What a shock!
Microsoft lost interest in you playing games on your PC when they came up with the XBOX. Apart from a few niche games that wouldn't translate to the format - Flight Sim, Age of Empires, etc.
You start off by telling us MS will only release DX10 on Vista to force gamers to upgrade. Then you tell us that MS doesn't care about gaming on the PC. Which is it? DX isn't going anywhere anytime soon; they are continuting to release a managed DX API so that
Look, if companies pocketed every cent of profit every year, no company would ever grow because there would be no investment capital. While capital can be given to CEOs, more often than not it's reinvested into the company so that it can expand.
Fine. How does what you say have any bearing on cutting the price of broadband for the customer? It doesn't matter if they pocket it or 're-invest' it, customers WON'T be getting a lower price.
Anywho, I was talking about a company getting more money from one of their sources (more profit), which it can use for reinvesting, giving bonues.. etc., but cutting prices for its customers is a very normal option for such a company.
Sure its an option. Will they ever do it? Nope.
Have you never seen a company cut prices for customers?
Only if a competitor does so first. The price of products do go down as you produce more, but that's not the case in a telco (or cable) which offer services. They're also monopolies.
Wal-Mart gets it's products at a discount. Wal-Mart could decide to just charge the exact same as everyone else, and let the Waltons pocket that billions of dollars in difference every year, but instead, since they have this extra money already available for expansion/normal expenses, they cut prices.
You don't know how Walmart works do you? Walmart insists that suppliers lower prices for Walmart. They even suggest lowering the quality of products which are meant to sell at Walmart. So those Levis you buy at Walmart are actually of lower quality than the exact same pair you could get anywhere else. Walmart WANTS lower prices, because it wants to undercut the competition. Where is the competition for Verizon DSL or (cable co.) High Speed internet? There is none.
Naturally, this brings in more customers and, hopefully, will ultimately bring in more customers. 100 people paying $29/mo. is better than 50 people paying $39/mo.
You've offered no proof that a company which enjoys a monopoly would lower prices though. You're assuming competition where there is none. 100 people paying $29 / month might be good, but why make them pay $29 when you can have them pay $39 because, seriously, where else are they going to go?
If the ISPs are bringing in more capital, they will be able to *cut* prices for consumers.
Um, why would they? Seriously? Give up profit, I don't think so.
Even if the telcos cut prices for consumers, would it make up for the inflated price of goods and services bought on the internet? Not likely.
Oh, I don't know... Is $600+ for a video game console or $60 per game is stupid?
A computer isn't a game console that just plug in and have work. People are more relucant to upgrade their OS than buying another black box. And yes, $600 for a game console, when you can have a computer that can play games AND do other tasks, is stupid.
Microsoft will be pressuring developers to create Vista-only games to force gamers and consumers to upgrade to Vista. This happened during the transition from Windows 98 to Windows XP.
They can try to pressure all they want, but that doesn't mean it will happen. If the majority of the game studios audience isn't on Vista they, they simply won't target Vista. Its as simple as that.
I don't recall MS pressuring game studios on the move from 98 to XP, especially since for some people, the move was 98 to WinME. Thankfully, ME was short lived.
In the end though, the peasents foot the bill. You don't really think that content providers will just lose the revenue do you? No, they'll pass it onto you,the customer.
Because you'll not only have to pay for a larger pipe at your end, you'll also have to pay several telco's for the 'privledge' of their users seeing your site. THAT would be a huge cost.
That would be pretty stupid, don't you think? MS might want you to upgrade, but they aren't going to render your previous games unplayable once you've done so.
People, if that were true, would not go to Vista, which means game studios wouldn't target DX10 either.
As it is, it will probably be a while before game studios target DX10; they actually do try to target the largest audience.
Indeed. No shit, a beta version of an OS doesn't properly run games from the previous OS yet.
But the reporter did the right thing in quoting an expert in a relevant fiel I
I think the reporter did the wrong thing, since he picked one that supported his claim while ignoring other experts that claim otherwise.
Wow, are you trolling, or really that racist?
The parent poster is wrong, but so are you. The FACT is that violent crime in the US has been steadly declining for about 30 years now. Even with an increase in blacks and latinos.
Of course you may be right; except that its whites who are less civilized.
Ah yes, the same old chestnut - it's always the parents fault. Even when the kids are exposed to pressures by the larger changes in sociey.
Ugh.. ok I will respond to one more point in your idiotic post. Studies have shown time and again that parents are the single largest influence in a childs life. Much more so than their friends or society at large. So yes, it is always the parents fault.
You keep acusing everyone of having their head in the sand, when you really don't know your facts at all.
Ok, now explain away the other symptoms of increased violence - like eight year old shooting other eight year olds on a regular basis. Or road rage. Etc... Etc... (Or consider the fact that most of the shootings to date have been by the disaffected - not by the preppie set that experience most of this pressure.)
I really wish you'd shut up about increased violence already:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm
How do you have 'symptoms of increased violence' when violent crime is actually on the decline?? I'm not going to bother to respond to the rest of your drivel, if you can't even get your facts straight.
Try reading your daily newspaper.
i me_x.htm
Perhaps you should take your own advice: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-09-cr
Ah. The old head-in-the-sand approach - we can't possibly be getting more violent.
Indeed. We coudln't possibly be getting LESS violent. After all, look at my evidence (anecdotal in nature, based on the number of stories).
And the plain fact is that over the last forty-fifty odd years, such interpersonal and societal violence has increased - sharply.
Er, where are you getting your information from? The FBI has been reporting a steadly decreasing violent crime rate for something like 30 years now.
An assumption unsupported by anything other than anecdotal evidence.
I think most people that play games would agree though. How many people does it take before its no longer anecdotal?
Once doesn't have to be 'PC' to compare the number of school shootings in the 70's to the number in the 90's to see that something has changed radically in society.
Yes, violent crime has decreased since the 70s. Focusing on one area of violent crime doesn't change that. School shootings weren't unheard of in the 70s either.
There are also many fools who won't look at an equal truth - we as a society have gotten more violent in recent decades.
Where's your proof? I'll restate; FBI statistics how violent crime has been decreasing steadly over the past 30 years.
The controls of manners and self restraint that once held such things in check are slipping.
I'll grant you that people are becoming more rude... but being rude and violent are hardly the same.
It's unlikely that video games bear the whole burden - but it's a reasonable that either as a cause or a symptom, they are likely to be involved.
Why are either of those reasonable? Sounds like you just have an axe to grind because you don't like popular video games, music, and movies.
Does the fight club necessarly have to become a terrorist cell? I don't think so. It only did so in the movie because their leader had alot of influence over the participants. In reality, not all of the participants would be that easy to sway to terrorism, and would likely report what was going on now.
If you had read the article, you'll note that the police acknowledge that the fighters are there willingly, and thus didn't really have any legal reason to stop them.
Seems to be it would be irrelevent if you knew karate or not.
This won't work at all.
They are operating under a logical fallacy. A flurry of calls after an overseas call does not mean the two are related in any way. Perhaps (and more likely than the person being a terrorist) is that the person which received the overseas call and then calls domestically is just relaying family information.
I know my family operated like this (although completely within the US). All you had to do was tell my grandmother something, and you could rest assured she'd spread the news to the rest of the family for you.
The court ruling seems like common sense to me. It doesn't stop anybody from whistleblowing - but don't count on keeping your job if you do.
Good job. Lets punish people for doing the right thing. We should also arrest the tipsters that let the police know where a known felon is.
The way I see it is that 1st amendment shouldn't protect you from loss of the job
If you report a crime though, you should not lose your job.
Win2k3, WinXPSP2 both have network RPC disabled by default.
I guess if you want to be fair, you can't exactly turn off IPC in *nix either, can you?
Care to try again?
Phone acting weird? You reset it or take it back.
heh, if only it was that easy. I tried to download and install IM software to my phone; to finish the installation, the phone had to reset. It did, but it never again go past the first verizon screen. It instead reset itself again and again.
Verizon couldn't fix it (actually they blamed me), so the phone is now trash.
Errr right OK. Maybe you should consider the fact that you don't have to stick a *nix box behind a firewall if you don't want to (although its more sensible to do so) because you can turn services off.
Care to name the windows services which you can't turn off? I wouldn't put any machine outside of a firewall that I didn't have to. I'm also curious if anyone repeated that experient with sticking an XP machine directly on a cable modem to see how long it took to become compromised, but with SP2.